Am I the Only One Who Likes Everything About MDC?

RPGPundit · December 29, 2009, 10:37:28 AM

I notice its one of the biggest areas of complaint about Palladium, but I find it brilliant.

Does anyone else agree?

RPGPundit

thedungeondelver · December 29, 2009, 10:55:48 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit;351840I notice its one of the biggest areas of complaint about Palladium, but I find it brilliant.

Does anyone else agree?

RPGPundit

I always thought it was pretty simple and straightforward (note: I only ever tinkered with the Robotech RPG) - 1000 SDC might equal 1 MDC, but no matter how many SDC you do to a tank (with a baseball bat) you're never going to damage it in any significant way.

Other games seem to have a severe balancing problem with that; for example, in Mechwarrior, you have a not-unbelievable chance of destroying a Battlemech with a single shot from a heavy pistol (damage on a 2-12, assume center torso possible critical, 3 crits, engine-engine-engine).

RockViper · December 29, 2009, 11:58:30 AM

Quote from: thedungeondelver;351843I always thought it was pretty simple and straightforward (note: I only ever tinkered with the Robotech RPG) - 1000 SDC might equal 1 MDC, but no matter how many SDC you do to a tank (with a baseball bat) you're never going to damage it in any significant way.

This is a great example of how it is supposed to work in play

Quote from: thedungeondelver;351843Other games seem to have a severe balancing problem with that; for example, in Mechwarrior, you have a not-unbelievable chance of destroying a Battlemech with a single shot from a heavy pistol (damage on a 2-12, assume center torso possible critical, 3 crits, engine-engine-engine).

The rule should defiantly be tweaked when necessary, all settings are not created equally.

Abyssal Maw · December 29, 2009, 11:59:55 AM

I think it's 100 SDC to 1 MDC.

In practice I had no problem with MDC, but I think a better solution is to use something closer to D&D3.5 style Damage Resistance:

Damage Resistance: 20 (or 50)/MDC Weaponry

(The real rule would be closer to DR 100/MDC weaponry.)

MDC weaponry could be multiplied x10 damage against SDC targets which would be pretty lethal but not automatically game-ending, and it would allow for a Rifts that didn't have everyone sleeping in their armor.

Cranewings · December 29, 2009, 01:04:56 PM

I think that is more rules than needed. MDC reflects super advanced technology and magic that we don't have in the real world. Even a modern AMRAAM deals SDC damage.

MDC weapons are like Kirk's pistol -- when you fire it down a hallway, three people turn blue and then vanish without leaving a smudge.

I think people run into problems conceptualizing MDC because they are trying to equate it with armor piercing, which it isn't.

The problem with using Damage Reduction is that it allows small arms to damage heavy armor sometimes, which they can't. Damage reduction is appropriate within a very narrow scope: like a boxer would have DR 5 / empty hand attacks.

PaladinCA · December 29, 2009, 01:09:39 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit;351840I notice its one of the biggest areas of complaint about Palladium, but I find it brilliant.

Does anyone else agree?

RPGPundit

I find plenty of things to dislike in the Palladium "system" but this is not one of them.

Silverlion · December 29, 2009, 01:35:59 PM

Not a big fan. It's a bit less elegant than I'd like.

It is simple enough though and that's one of its merits.

I think the hiccups for me comes more with the abuse of MDC in a given setting/game. More and more weapons piled into Rifts that make the Boom Gun seem positively derringer like? I thought it was supposed to be bad-ass?

The issue could be improved if MDC were more commonly used for vehicles, and not so much for personal arms and armor, even Dragons could be greatly impressive with say a 1000 SDC but still let the lucky hero with the sword kill him because of a critical hit (directly to hit points.) Since in the setting most PC ones are still child-dragons.

Peregrin · December 29, 2009, 01:51:51 PM

The conclusion people have reached elsewhere (in my conversations offline and watching a few recent threads elsewhere) is that mega-damage works if it's applied properly, but Rifts uses it in a very unrestrained way, and that may cause some problems for GMs who aren't careful.

Ian Absentia · December 29, 2009, 01:53:34 PM

The only time I had a problem with MDC was when scale wasn't consistent. I had no problem with the MDC increase from a human being to a Veritech fighter in the Macross setting, and I didn't have a problem with the MDC increase from a human to a suit of Cyclone body armor in the Invid Invasion setting. Each leap to MDC was consistent within the separate settings. As I recall, it only caused a problem when you'd compare the MDC ratings for a man-sized Cyclone against a Veritech-sized Alpha or Beta fighter.

Otherwise, I rather quite liked the notion that certain types of defensive technology simply weren't practically assailable by other types of weapons.

!i!

The Butcher · December 29, 2009, 02:21:02 PM

I have nothing against the MDC mechanic. Of course, something like the "heavy armor" rule from Savage Worlds does the same thing, in a considerably simpler manner, but I don't find MDC particularly clunky and of itself.

The real problem with MDC is that it's overused. Nearly everything that crawls out of a rift is MDC. The fauna of Rifts Earth is teeming with effectively indestructible transdimensional animals, which should raise several interesting questions about ecology.

Of course, the height of siliness was reached in Wormwood, with MDC humans.

MDC in and of itself is not a bad concept, it's just way overused. It should have been saved for dragons, greater demons, alien intelligences and other really big supernatural heavy-hitters.

Ian Absentia · December 29, 2009, 02:34:51 PM

Quote from: The Butcher;351869MDC in and of itself is not a bad concept, it's just way overused. It should have been saved for dragons, greater demons, alien intelligences and other really big supernatural heavy-hitters.

Or, as I tried to imply in my post above, perhaps a series of scaled steps in increasing damage levels.

!i!

Bobloblah · December 29, 2009, 03:32:44 PM

Yeah, MDC gets kinda kludgy when overused, as in the Rifts RPG. I mean, I like it as a mechanic, but using it everywhere leads to all sorts of logical breakdown in a setting.

It also, in practice, seems to require far more attention to scaling than Siembieda has ever payed it, in any of Palladium's published material.

As for conceptual problems that others like Cranewings mentioned, those may stem directly from Siembieda's own thought experiments used to explain this mechanic's existence and function. I remember him using the tank/baseball bat in Rifts, but I can't remember any more if he used it in other MDC settings...

David Johansen · December 29, 2009, 03:57:59 PM

Really, there needs to be a x100 and an x10000 scale to keep the numbers down and prevent a guy with a laser pistol from hurting the battleship Yamoto.

But the basic mechanism is quite sound. I just hate that they create mega damage and then hand out pistols that do mega damage. However, if there was a second, higher scale for really big stuff I wouldn't mind so much.

KrakaJak · December 29, 2009, 04:05:00 PM

I love everything about the Palldiums armor system mechanics in general. There are the occasional glitches and 'WTF?' moments based on it's implementation but as a mechanic it's sound, easy to use, makes sense and is (most importantly) fun.

The only thing I do differently is allow SDC weapons (within reason) to inlict a single point of MD on MDC vehicles/armors on critical hits.

crkrueger · December 29, 2009, 04:39:59 PM

I always thought MDC was brilliant and the "Hit Points for Armor" is still the best way I see to have Power Armor function.

I really only had two problems with MDC. The first houserule I made was so that someone who got hit in the arm for 2 MD wouldn't vaporize, but have his arm blown off. The second was the "laser pistol vs. Main Hull of the SDF-1" problem, which seems to call for a third scale of damage or possibly an absorption value. (I never ran into that problem in play, so never decided how to houserule that one.)